2. See the papers in Wells, David F. (ed.): ‘Reformed Theology in America’ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1985). These show how these divisions within the Reformed tradition have been worked out in Canada and the United States. For example, there is the Dutch–American tradition deriving from the influence of Abraham Kuyper and the Scottish–American tradition more strongly influenced by Thomas Reid’s ‘common–sense philosophy’. The former is more dominant through Herman Dooyeweerd’s influence on the Toronto Institute for Christian Studies and the Christian schools movement that has derived its inspiration largely from that centre. The latter seems fairly prominent in the writings of Nicholas Wolterstorff of Calvin College and is also one of the influences in the shaping of the movement known as ‘Christian Schools International’.

32. I have elsewhere suggested that there are two main components to autonomy: authenticity and rationality. It would seem that Van Til has no objection to the first but that the second is a major stumbling block in some forms. See Shortt, John: ‘A Critical Problem for Rational Autonomy’ in ‘Spectrum’, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Summer, 1986), pp. 107 – 121 and also later on pp. 48 – 49 of this present study.

65. Ibid., pp. 48 – 55. This latter point has implications for discussions of certainty and commitment to which I shall return later – see pp. 114 – 116 of this study.

66. Ibid., pp. 59 – 60.

67. See, for example, Alston, William P. (1983), p. 119, Wolterstorff, Nicholas (1983), pp. 149 – 153, 162 – 164, and Plantinga, Alvin (1985), pp. 62 – 63. Scottish common–sense philosophy is often seen as one of the two main influences upon modern Reformed epistemology, the other being the Dutch neo–Calvinism of such as Kuyper and Bavinck – see the introduction and several of the papers in the ‘historical setting’ section of Hart, Hendrik et als (eds.) (1983) and also fn. 2 to p. 9 of this present study.

68. Plantinga, Alvin (1985), p. 386. The argument of Plantinga, Alvin (1983b) is presented in an amended version here.

CHAPTER 2 (pp. 19 – 35)

2. I have worded this rough formulation in this way to rule out believing everything simply to maximise truth, believing nothing simply to minimise falsity and believing only that which is obviously true. This leaves problems of the relative weightings of true beliefs against false beliefs and of beliefs on matters of importance against those which are relatively trivial but the above is sufficient to roughly mark out the epistemic area.

3. The distinction between moral and epistemic may not be quite as clear as this. Perhaps the maximising of truth and minimising of falsity could be thought of as partly constitutive of moral goodness. For example, on the basis of a divine command theory of ethics, biblical injunctions to believe could be taken as moral commands. This would seem to make the epistemic area a part of the moral area. Further, talk of ‘the ethics of belief’ certainly seems to bring into question the relationship between epistemology and ethics and perhaps when, as sometimes happens, epistemologists make appeal to ‘ethical analogues’ they may be doing more than merely finding isomorphisms between relatively autonomous areas.

10. Armstrong proposes a “thermometer model” according to which there may be a law–like relation between a state of affairs and a person’s beliefs provided they are produced by a reliable belief–producing mechanism just as the readings of a reliable thermometer lawfully reflect the temperature – see Armstrong, D. M.: ‘Belief, Truth and Knowledge’ (Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 166 – 171.

16. Sosa, Ernest (1980b), pp. 11 – 13. There are other arguments and Sosa mentions several of them. They can, I think, be met more easily than the one in question. For example, it is argued that life is too short or the human brain too limited to show that for each member of the chain that it is justified but this is inadequate since what is at issue is whether or not such a regress can be ruled out in principle rather than because of practical limitations. It is not a matter of engaging in the activity of actually showing or demonstrating that each belief in an infinite chain is justified but rather of whether or not it is possible for them all to be justified. It is also inadequate to point to the possibility of an infinite causal chain in the manner of familiar responses to one of Aquinas’ arguments for the existence of God. Epistemic justification is about reasons, not causes.

36. This response meets a similar objection to holding belief in God to be properly basic: that it requires some prior inferential knowledge of what God is like (the main point of Goetz, Stewart (1983)).

37. Moser, Paul K. (1985), p. 177,

38. Ibid., p. 178. See more on this kind of level–confusion in Alston, William P.: ‘Level–Confusions in Epistemology’ in French, Peter et als (eds) (1980), pp. 135 – 150.

41. Alston, William P.: ‘Religious Experience and Religious Knowledge’ in ‘Journal of Philosophy’, Vol. 83 (1986b), pp. 655 – 656. Even though Alston is talking about a different kind of religious experience, I have made use in what follows of some of his arguments for the epistemic irrelevance of purported differences between sense experience and religious experience since they apply equally to the kind of mediated experiences with which I am concerned.

43. Alston, William P. (1986b), p. 662. Joseph Bobik, for example dismisses religious intuition on the unsupported assumption that only sense experience and self consciousness are acceptable grounds of intuition – see Bobik, Joseph: ‘Intuition and God and Some New Metaphysicians’ in McInerny, Ralph D. (ed.): ‘New Themes in Christian Philosophy’, (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), p. 269.

44. Ibid., pp. 660 – 661.

45. Keith Yandell points out that a being like the genie of Aladdin’s lamp who had to come when the lamp was rubbed would not be God – see Yandell, Keith: ‘Christianity and Philosophy’ (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1984), p. 12.

46. Audi, Robert (1986), p. 150.

47. Quinton, Anthony (1973), pp. 125, 129.

48. Alston, William P. (1983a), p. 130.

49. Ibid., p. 132.

50. This point is due to George Mavrodes from Mavrodes, George: ‘Belief in God’ (Lanham: University Press of America, 1981) and quoted in Evans, C. Stephen (1985), p. 88.

51. I derive this criticism from Agassi who claims it has several forms, one of which is as defined above which makes every criticism an event predicted by the theory and thus a reinforcement of it – see Agassi, Joseph, Jarvie, I. C. and Settle, Tom: ‘The Ground of Reason’ in ‘Philosophy’, Vol. XLVI (1971), pp. 46 – 47.

61. See p. 17 of this study. See also Alston, William P.: ‘The Role of Reason in the Regulation of Religious Belief’ in Hart, Hendrik et als (eds.) (1983b), p. 156 and f.n. 20 on p. 169; and Wolterstorff, Nicholas (1983b), p. 174.

5. A third possibility is that of knowledge and revelation of skills since we may know how to do certain things and we may reveal to others how to do them. And it is possible to talk of God revealing not only himself or that he made the world but also how we ought to live or relate to others. But, for the present, I shall focus upon how revelation can bring about knowledge of the minds, thoughts, intentions of others and whatever else may constitute personal knowledge.

6. See Owen, H. P. (1969), p. 40.

7. Nor, for that matter, are ‘knowing that’ and ‘knowing how’ mutually exclusive although the latter cannot be reduced altogether to the former.

9. See chap. 2, p. 29. The earliest use of the expression I can find is in Owen, H. P. (1969), p. 135 and this is echoed in Donovan, Peter: ‘Interpreting Religious Experience’ (London: Sheldon Press, 1979), p. 57 and used also by Alston, William P. (1981), p. 145. A similar idea (but not the phrase) is present in Mavrodes, George (1970), pp. 62 – 66.

10. Owen, H. P. (1969) pp. 130 – 137.

11. Robert Audi has an alternative account of what is happening here – see Audi, Robert (1986), p. 152 – 154. He makes a distinction between beliefs being “contemporaneously evidentially dependent” and their being “historically evidentially dependent”. The former are a matter of needing evidence at the time of believing while the latter, which could perhaps be applied to the present case, are a matter of their justification requiring that one once had adequate evidence for the proposition in question. It seems to me that this ‘evidence’ is rather a condition for the existence of the belief rather than a condition for its justification – see pp. 27 – 28 of last chapter. Another alternative is that of what Quinton terms “telescoped inference” – see Quinton, Anthony (1973), p. 220 and cf. Alston, William P. (1985), pp. 71 – 72 on “unconscious inferences” – but this seems a rather ad hoc response.

11. See my ‘A Critical Problem for Rational Autonomy’ in ‘Spectrum’ Vol. 18, no. 2 (Summer, 1986), pp. 107 – 121. In what follows I have made use of this study but, having since come to the conclusion that much of it was inadequately nuanced or just plain wrong–headed, I have made extensive revisions to it without departing substantially from the main argument. Also, at the time that it was written, I did not have access to the second edition of Bartley’s ‘The Retreat to Commitment’ in which he takes up some of the criticisms made in discussions of the first edition, the apparent inconclusiveness of which I had taken as evidence of lack of success in his attempt to resolve ‘the dilemma of ultimate commitment’.

12. Pohlmann, Rosemary: ‘Autonomie’ in Ritter, Joachim (ed.): ‘Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie’ (Basel: Schwabe, 1971), columns 701 – 719. She suggests that the uses of the term are so far from being univocal that they may even lack what Wittgenstein called ‘family resemblances’.

13. The ability to reason well has also been suggested as being partly constitutive of personal autonomy. See, for example, Barrow, Robin: ‘Moral Philosophy for Education’ (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975), pp. 138 – 140. The main argument for this seems to be that without it autonomy is not a desirable ideal. Great criminals can be markedly autonomous and the more autonomous they are the worse they are likely to be. See Dearden, R.F. (1972), p. 461 and also Adams, Robert Merrihew: ‘Autonomy and Theological Ethics’ in ‘Religious Studies’ Vol. 15 (1979), pp. 192 – 193 and Young, Robert: ‘Personal Autonomy: Beyond Negative and Positive Liberty’ (London: Croom Helm, 1986), pp. 30 – 31. I think that an easy way out of this is to argue that because autonomy is held to be of value it does not follow that it is the only or even the supreme value. May it not form part of a more comprehensive ideal of personal attainment which also includes the ability to reason well or correctly? We may value the criminal’s possession of ‘a mind of his own’ above mindless conformity to the pressure of others and nevertheless deplore the use to which he has put his independent–mindedness. So it need not be required of the autonomous person that he reason well or correctly. However, even if this requirement is included, I do not see that the believer as such has to differ with the non–believer on the value of reasoning well, all other things being equal. There may be such a phenomenon as fundamentalist obscurantism but I do not think that it necessarily characterises the stance of the Reformed epistemologist or of Christian believers in general.

14. See p. 8 of this study.

15. Joel Feinberg provides us with a definition of autonomy which seems to me to be very helpful in the light it throws upon the idea of authenticity: “I am autonomous if I rule me and no–one else rules I.” – see Feinberg, Joel: ‘The Idea of a Free Man’ in Doyle, James F.: ‘Educational Judgements’ (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 166. This requirement leads to talk of thought and action being “an expression of one’s core self” or “motivated by the constituting self” or the like. The ‘I’ who rules ‘me’ has to be a ‘core self’, ‘constituting self’, ‘true self’ or ‘real self’ which is narrow enough to be contrasted with the ‘me’ or total self over which it is to rule and yet wide enough to have constitutive elements of its own which form a coherent whole – unlike those of the anomic sufferer of a condition like schizophrenia. At the same time, no–one else must rule ‘I’ and although this obviously excludes hypnosis, brainwashing and the like, it is by no means so obvious what we are to make of the many and varied social pressures which influence the person. And the position becomes even more complicated when it is also taken into account that many of these influences are internalised in the early years of life – see Dearden, R. F.: ‘Autonomy and Education in Dearden, R. F., Hirst, P. H. and Peters, R. S. (eds.) (1972), p. 450. The problem is how to provide some ontology of the person that gives him both personal and social identity. On the one hand, it would be easy to adopt a ghostly individualism which makes people into what Martin Hollis calls “abstract and absurd angels in a historical vacuum” – see Hollis, Martin: ‘Models of Man’ (Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 73. In this case, there is no space for a core self but, on the other hand, such a self cannot be wholly a social product for that leads to the passive conception of a “Plastic Man” (Hollis’ expression for something he contrasts with “Autonomous Man”) which is incapable of self–origination in any significant sense. This seems to leave the self sliding uneasily along a continuum between the extremes of the lonely pre–social atomic individual and the wholly determined social product and it takes us to the threshold of a vast arena of philosophical debate but one into which within the confines of this study we may not tread. One rather inadequate remark I would make to provide a pointer to the direction that could be taken at this point is that it would seem plausible to suggest that the notion of the self as being created by God and existing in relation to him as a person would be likely to lead to a view of the nature and value of authenticity which differs fairly radically from that of a self which simply finds itself in a world of other selves similarly placed or even, in the manner of some existentialists, sees itself as ‘thrown’ into the world.

33. Penelhum, Terence: ‘God and Scepticism’ (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983), pp. 146 – 158. There are many parallels between Penelhum’s work and that of Bartley. They both trace the argument in question from roots in the Pyrrhonian scepticism of Sextus Empiricus through Bayle, Pascal, and Kierkegaard although they differ in whom they take as modern users of it, Barth in Bartley’s case and Malcolm and Plantinga in that of Penelhum. It is therefore surprising to find no mention of Bartley’s book in Penelhum’s in spite of it being first published some twenty years earlier and attempting to go rather further than Penelhum does to respond to the argument. Penelhum does acknowledge the influence of Richard Popkin’s work on scepticism (p. 3).

43. See Evans, Donald: ‘Faith, Authenticity, and Morality’ (Edinburgh, Handsel Press, 1980), p. 115. I am adapting the distinction somewhat from that suggested by Evans although the basic idea is the same.

45. See earlier discussion on pp. 20 – 21 and Alston’s analogy mentioned then with our obligation to be in good health and the steps we can take to influence the conditions that make for good or bad health.

49. I used to think that because this debate appeared to be inconclusive Bartley’s account was thereby invalidated – see Shortt, John G. (1986), pp. 111 – 119. I am no longer sure of this. Like several of his critics, I had taken it to be necessary that Bartleyjustify his alternative but, of course, this would be inconsistent with the whole tenor of his approach. For Bartley, the whole business is about openness to criticism rather than rational acceptability. In addition, the recent second edition of his book has among its appendices one that deals fairly thoroughly with this question so that the debate may no longer be as inconclusive as I took it to be before.

50. Bartley, W.W. (1984), p. 112.

51. Ibid., p. 110. The impression of an ‘almost revelation’ is also given in the way he introduces the new dimension of metacontexts in the first appendix to the second edition of his book (pp. 169 – 170): he talks of the “realization” that rationality “should be treated metacontextually” and this certainly has a strong justificationist ring to it.

52. Ibid., p. xv.

53. Ibid., p. 109.

54. Ibid., p. 83.

55. Ibid., pp. xiii – xiv.

56. Ibid., p. 72.

57. Ibid., pp. 86, 124.

58. Ibid., p. 126.

59. If I am correct here, it is hardly surprising that there has been some discussion as to whether Bartley’s suggestion that every belief can be held open to criticism is analytically true and trivial. See Watkins, J.W.N.:’CCR: A Refutation’ in ‘Philosophy’, Vol. 46, no. 175 (January, 1971), pp. 56 – 61; Settle, Tom, Jarvie, I.C.and Agassi, Joseph: ‘Towards a Theory of Openness to Criticism’ in ‘Philosophy of the Social Sciences’, Vol. 4 (1974), pp. 85 – 87; and Derksen, A.A.: ‘The Failure of Comprehensively Critical Rationalism’ in ‘Philosophy of the Social Sciences’, Vol. 10 (1980), pp. 53 – 57.

63. Cf. Hudson, W.D.:’Professor Bartley’s Theory of Rationality and Religious Belief’ in ‘Religious Studies’, Vol. 9 (1973), pp. 343 – 344; Hudson, W.D.:’Learning to be Rational’ in ‘Proceedings of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain’, Vol. 11 (1977), pp. 43 – 44; and Robinson, N.H.G.:’The Rationalist and His Critics’ in ‘Religious Studies’, Vol. 11 (1975), pp. 347 – 348. Hudson’s accounts include a very effective counter to Bartley’s analogy of this situation with that of a democrat voting democratically to give up democracy in pointing out that the criticism which he takes to be of the essence of rationality is more than the exercise of choice. Indeed, it could be added that his use of the analogy commits Bartley to the very decisionism that he is so concerned to oppose!

72. Bartley, W.W. (1984), p. 212. In the light of this easy dismissal of psychologism, it is interesting to find that whether or not Bartley’s own account is weakened by en element of psychologism is debated among his protagonists and defenders – see Watkins, J.W.N. (1971), Settle, Tom et als (1974) and Derksen, A.A. (1980).

74. See the extensive discussions of this in Martin, Robert L. (ed.): ‘The Paradox of the Liar’ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970) and Martin, Robert L. (ed.): ‘Recent Essays on Truth and the Liar Paradox’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). See also Mavrodes, George I.: ‘Self–Referential Incoherence’ in ‘American Philosophical Quarterly’, Vol. 22, No. 1 (January, 1985), pp. 65 – 72.

75. Watkins, J.W. (1984), pp. 224 – 227.

76. Ibid., p. 238.

77. Agassi, Joseph et als (1971), p. 44.

78. This is a term used by Paul Tillich and, following him, Robert Merrihew Adams – see Adams, Robert Merrihew: ‘Autonomy and Theological Ethics’ in ‘Religious Studies’, Vol. 15 (1979), p. 194 – but I am giving it a meaning which is not as restricted to the field of ethics as theirs seems to be and which has what I think they would regard as unacceptably heteronomous elements.

79. To accept this latter point is to accept one of the premises of James Rachels’ attempted moral disproof of the existence of God – see Rachels, James: ‘God and Human Attitudes’ in Helm, Paul (ed.): ‘Divine Commands and Morality’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 34 – 48 – but his conclusion follows only if one also accepts his further premise: that it is not possible for man to abandon the assumption of autonomous agency. It is that further premise that is excluded by the assumption of theonomy.

80. A further objection could be that even if a person is justified in believing that God is speaking to him, he still has the responsibility to decide for himself whether he ought to do what God tells him, i.e. whether God and his commands are good. This is one of the objections raised on the basis of the assumption of moral autonomy to most if not all versions of what has become known as Divine Command meta–ethics. I cannot go into detail on this here except to say that if I have been correct in appealing to parallels between ethics and epistemology, it should be possible to respond to these objections in a way that is analogous to that which I have used above. Also in the light of the considerable debate over Divine Command theories in ethics, it is not obvious that this objection can be sustained – see the essays in Helm, Paul (1981) and also the following:– Schrader, George A.: ‘Autonomy, Heteronomy and Moral Imperatives’ in ‘Journal of Philosophy’, Vol. 60 (1963), pp. 65 – 77; Adams, Robert Merrihew (1979); Sokol, Moshe Z.: ‘The Autonomy of Reason, Revealed Morality and Jewish Law’ in ‘Religious Studies’, Vol. 22 (1986) pp. 423 – 437; Hanink, James G. and Mar, Gary R.: ‘What Euthyphro Couldn’t Have Said’ in ‘Faith and Philosophy’, Vol. 4, No. 3 (July, 1987), pp. 241 – 261; Adams, Robert Merrihew: ‘Divine Commands and the Social Nature of Obligation’ in ‘Faith and Philosophy’, Vol. 4, No. 3 (July, 1987), pp. 262 – 275; and Murphy, Jeffrie G.: ‘Kantian Autonomy and Divine Commands’ in ‘Faith and Philosophy’, Vol. 4, No. 3 (July, 1987), pp. 276 – 281.

9. In his study of the human sciences (‘Preserving the Person’, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1977, p. 89), C. Stephen Evans uses the terms ‘territorialist’ and ‘perspectivalist’ but I have changed the first of these because it suggests that the study of a particular part of reality is in need of protection from possible intruders and I do not think that this kind of attitude necessarily characterises the proponent of this particular type of position.

11. The Christian who sees God as the Creator of the universe must presumably hold that he is different from that which he has created and yet capable of interacting with it and is thereby committed to some form of dualism involving an interaction which is, in principle, impossible for created human beings to explain. 12. See MacKay, D. M.: ‘The Clockwork Image’ (London: Inter–Varsity Press, 1974) and ‘Brains, Minds and Machines’ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980).

21. Ramsey, I. T.: ‘Religious Language’ (London: S.C.M. Press, 1957), p. 127. Ramsey suggests that to treat the Resurrection as a historical event is a category error of the kind that we have considered above as he writes: ‘We cannot date the Resurrection: any more than we can walk out with Pythagoras’ Theorem or find the square root of love’ (p. 130).

22. Admittedly, to make this claim is to adopt a realist outlook rather than, say, the ‘transcendent idealism’ of the Wittgensteinian philosopher (see earlier on p. 25) wherein it would not make sense to talk of a reality external to a particular language–game but then the language use of the ‘ordinary’ believer hardly conforms to such esoteric requirements. So if it be allowed that both historical and religious statements do refer to the same reality of the one event, the relationship between accounts can hardly be that of strict incommensurability.

23. The Dutch Christian philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd was fond of the illustration of the multi–faceted activity of buying a box of cigars. A jurist would notice the rights and duties of buyer and seller. An aesthetician would be more interested in the style of the activity, the gestures of the participants and the like. An economist would focus on the price and value of the cigars. And so on through the sociologist, the linguist, the psychologist and many others. See Seerveld, Calvin G.: ‘Dooyeweerd’s Legacy for Aesthetics’ in McIntire, C. T. (ed.): ‘The Legacy of Herman Dooyeweerd: Reflections on Critical Philosophy in the Christian Tradition’ (Lanham: University Press of America, 1985), pp. 47 – 48.

28. This is a form of ‘retrospective justification’ whereby foundations are the end goal of ‘an archaeological dig’ rather than the first steps in constructing the building of a set of ‘prospectively’ justified beliefs or practices. This term and the contrasting metaphors for the role of foundations is taken from Burrell, David B.: ‘Religious Belief and Rationality’ in Delaney, C. F. (ed.): ‘Rationality and Religious Belief’ (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), p. 107.

31. Roy Bhaskar says there is an ‘epistemic fallacy’ which “consists in the view that statements about being can be reduced to, or analysed in terms of, statements about knowledge: i.e. that ontological questions can always be transposed into epistemological terms” – see Bhaskar, Roy: ‘A Realist Theory of Science’ (Leeds: Leeds Books Ltd., 1975), p. 36.

70. A Jewish writer, Norman Solomon, points out that this is often a matter of argument from particular to general in the first instance – in extracting a general principle from particular instances recorded in the Scriptures – and then the general principle has in its turn to be applied to the particular of the contemporary situation. He claims that this makes the process doubly fraught with uncertainties. See Solomon, Norman: ‘Political Implications of the Belief in Revelation’ in ‘Heythrop Journal’ (1984), pp. 129 – 141.

7. Meynell, Hugo A.: ‘Moral Education and Indoctrination’ in ‘Journal of Moral Education’ (Vol. 4 No. 1, Oct. 1974), p. 18. Some might argue that Meynell’s own assumption that the child is male shows the presence of the same attitude in him!

18. Martin, Charles: ‘How Plural Can You Get?’ in ‘Spectrum’. Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer, 1989), p. 164. Martin suggests that ‘The Way of Wisdom’ be seen as a third alternative to natural law and common grace as a model for co–operation between Christians and others.

20. See Hick, John (1985), pp. 32 – 33. 21. II Timothy chapter 2 verse 19 (N.I.V.). Louis Berkhof in his ‘Systematic Theology’ (Edinburgh, Banner of Truth Trust, 1958, pp. 565–566), as conservative and Reformed a volume of theology as any, writes that the church is said to be invisible “because she is essentially spiritual and in her spiritual essence cannot be discerned by the physical eye; and because it is impossible to determine infallibly who do and who do not belong to her”.

22. Hick, John (1988), p. 365.

23. Hick, John (1985), pp. 32 – 33.

24. Hick, John (1988), p. 375.

25. Ibid., p. 369.

26. Ibid., p. 367.

27. Hick’s pluralism has been referred to as ‘a priori pluralism’ and this would seem to give support to that view. See Griffiths, Paul J. (1988), pp. 412 – 415 and Hick’s response in Hick, John (1988), p. 453.

36. I borrow this phrase from an unpublished paper – Crittenden, Brian: ‘Cultural Pluralism and Common Curriculum’. Crittenden defines it as a kind of voluntary apartheid where both primary and secondary associations are limited to people of the same cultural sub–group.